Shift, rotate is part of it. But there are many more integer operations and all of them perform well on GCN. In addition, there is branching performance to consider that practically no one talks about.Reply

Lots of very useful things are still FP32. All the multimedia and 3D rendering is FP32 and integer (h.264 is integer for example). Engineering is still very useful in FP32 so long as you don't need absolute precision or can deal with small rounding errors.Reply

Looks like you're right. That's the first 290 card I've seen with two mini-DP. I'm looking at getting a couple of Dell's 4K 24" monitors, so I need two DP outputs. My existing 7950 has that, and my Linux box has a 7770 with two mini-DP, but almost no current-gen cards from either AMD or Nvidia offer this. (Except the workstation cards.)Reply

I've heard that statement a few years ago, when 128MB vram was considered "to much". It wasn't. And for some applications now and even more in 1-2 years 8GB won't be "to much". Games like Hitman Absolution, Thief 4 and some mods can easily max out the vram of a Titan, while achieving playable FPS in 4K resolution.

Considering the PS4 and XBox 1 both have 8GB of ram each, I was a little surprised that the new videocards where coming out with only 4GB. Granted, it's 8GB of shared ram in the consoles, but next gen games are going to start taking large pools of ram for granted now.Reply

It's probably better to have too much and not need it than to not have enough and need it. They did it due to pressure from developers. If developers find a way to use it all, the PS4 will have a distinct advantage.Reply

First, it's been confirmed through testing that you need ~4GB if you plan on doing at 4xAA at 4K, depending on the game. If you start playing with higher settings, higher-res texture packs, and newer games designed to take advantage of more VRAM (thanks Xbone/PS4), then 8GB won't seem too extreme.

Second, you assume that only gamers want this, but there are many non-gaming applications that will eat up every last bit of VRAM you can throw at them and many consumers unwilling to spend the incredible premium on workstation cards.